Odd jobs – Unusual Cosmetic Repairs by Plastic Surgeon’s finishers

Odd jobs – Unusual Cosmetic Repairs by Plastic Surgeon’s finishers

September 15th, 2011

Here at Plastic Surgeon we repair all sorts of damaged construction products on a daily basis, ranging from the ubiquitous chipped sink or gouged worktop, through to dented cladding panels and scratched window panes. And we work in a variety of surroundings too, such as on large development sites, hospitals, shops, leisure destinations and individual homes.

So it is not surprising, perhaps, that our Finishers find themselves doing some unusual repairs, quite often in equally unusual places.

For example, we have repaired cracked urinals in the executive washrooms at a premier league football stadium that has seen its share of European success as well as controversy about the prawn sandwiches served after matches.

Some other ‘fishy business’ saw one of our Finishers helping the Environment Agency, where he repaired damaged electrodes on a resistivity machine that counts the number of fish swimming past it in the River Tamar. This involved us in developing a specially coloured, bespoke translucent version of a filler to repair the electrodes so that the fish would show up on video when swimming past the sensors.

Another very visually sensitive job involved a Finisher donning his artistic hat, when the owner of an art gallery called us in to repair a piece of modern art. The 1960s sculpture in Perspex had been scratched in transit to the gallery and the intervention of course needed to pass constant close attention from visitors.

Also straying into the art world was the work carried out by a team of Finishers asked to make good water damage to a mural covering the entire wall of a West Country hotel’s swimming pool. Rainwater seeping in through the parking deck above had done a lot of damage, meaning the Finishers had to stabilize and repair the plasterwork before they could begin to repaint parts of the highly colourful mural to match the original.

Staying with sport we’ve recently repaired engineering bricks at one of the venues for the 2012 Olympics, which had suffered damage to the jointing. The extra hard bricks had been cut in the manner of a mitre, but at an oblique angle, and previous attempts to repair the edges and mortar had failed; preventing the contractor from getting the area signed off.

Current major projects include repairing and re-enameling all the baths for a city council’s housing stock, as well as carrying out the fine finishing and repairing the inevitable snagging damage at one of the largest new office developments in the UK.

And while a lot of building workers like a pint after they finish for the day, we had a couple of our operatives putting the finishing touches to the bar on the historic pier at Weston-Super-Mare, which was completely refurbished after being badly damaged by fire.

What we’ll get called upon to repair in the future is anyone’s guess … all we can do is cite a couple of clichés: no two days are ever the same – and as they say, it’s all in a day’s work.